Monday, 23 December 2013

The BBC has the right - and in some senior quarters the desire - to show the nine recently-discovered Patrick TroughtonDoctor Who episodes on BBC television, RadioTimes.com understands.

The BBC has confirmed that it has the right to air both The Web of Fear and The Enemy of the World
in the UK decades after they were first broadcast. And if they do get
aired they will almost certainly be shown on BBC4, senior sources have
confirmed.

However RadioTimes.com understands that a decision would be made in
conjunction with BBC Worldwide, which is masterminding their commercial
release on iTunes where they were put on sale in October.

However senior sources have said that the BBC has not ruled out
airing the episodes on free to air TV eventually, although no time frame
has been decided on and no formal decision has been made.

If it does go ahead it would be likely to be some time after the DVD release, according to sources.

When asked about BBC TV’s interests in airing the episodes, a senior
BBC executive told RadioTimes.com that no decision had been made but
that if BBC television were to obtain the rights they would almost
certainly air on BBC4 and not on BBC2.

A Worldwide spokesman said that the “BBC has the rights to show them if they wanted to”.

The BBC could not confirm the nature of the deal with Phillip Morris,
director of the Television International Enterprises Archive, who found
the missing material or whether a TV broadcast would require more money
paid to him.

Both parties have also refused to divulge whether more missing material has been found by Morris.

This year’s Christmas special, The Time of Doctor will be released on DVD and Blu-ray in a boxset, alongside the Eleventh Doctor’s other festive adventures.

Starring Matt Smith, The Time of the Doctor and the Eleventh Doctor Christmas Specials, will feature for the first time in one box A Christmas Carol, The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe and The Snowmen, as well as 2013’s Christmas episode, featuring Matt Smith’s departure from the role.

Up first is Sarah Jane Smith,
who will be released on Sunday 22 December (around 10am GMT). Users
will require a promo code to unlock the companion character, which will
be released on the Doctor Who Legacy Facebook page, as part of their Advent Calendar.

The Eighth Doctor
will follow on Monday 23 December. A guaranteed drop - as with previous
Doctors - Paul McGann’s Doctor will be found upon completion of the
Paradox of the Whispermen level. Excitingly, the artwork for the Eighth
Doctor features him in his The Night of the Doctor costume, complete with boots, scarf and shorter hair.

This release news comes hot on the heels of their recent addition of the Sixth and Seventh Doctors as free characters.

Doctor Who: Legacy
is a new free to play mobile action-RPG, where fans can play though 50
years of adventures in space and time. It is available now for free on Google Play and iTunes.

Wednesday, 11 December 2013

The first promotional photo of soon to be Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi in BBC One’s The Musketeers has been released.

The ten-part adventure drama series also stars Luke Pasqualino (Skins) as D’Artagnan, Santiago Cabrera (Merlin) as Aramis, Tom Burke (The Hour) as Athos and Howard Charles as Porthos.

Capaldi's character, Cardinal Richelieu, is described as "scheming,
ruthless and pragmatic" and "the most powerful man in France".

The BBC's official introduction to the character reads: "In the eyes of
the Musketeers, he is a villain, a power-hungry dictator whose ultimate
aim is nothing less than complete control of France. But in his own eyes
the Cardinal is bringing much needed order to an outlaw society. He
knows the King’s weaknesses all too well and understands that someone
must take on the burden of government in his place. But nevertheless in
his own way the Cardinal is loyal to the crown. Dry and witty, capable
of great charm, he is also calculating and mercilessly cruel in
implementing his vision. Despite his cool exterior the Cardinal is a man
of carefully hidden passions."

Having left Doctor Who, former Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith takes to the stage as Patrick Bateman in the musical adaption
of Bret Easton Ellis' 1991 cult novel American Psycho. (see previous post)

He will play
the Wall Street yuppie with a penchant for both designer clothing and
brutal decapitation; whose sadistic tendencies become ever more
uncontrollable as he acts out his narcissistic life in consumer-obsessed
'80s New York. With a book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, and, music and lyrics from Tony Award-winner Duncan Sheik, American Psycho will make its bloody opening at the Almeida Theatre.

The author of American Psycho,Bret Easton Ellis felt that there was no need for a film adaptation back in 1999.

'American Psycho was a book I didn’t
think needed to be turned into a movie,' Ellis said in 2010. 'It was
conceived as a novel, as a literary work with a very unreliable narrator
at the centre of it and the medium of film demands answers. I
don’t think American Psycho is particularly more interesting if you
knew that he did it or think that it all happens in his head. I think
the answer to that question makes the book infinitely less interesting.'

However, with this new West End take on his horror satire of a capitalist world, Ellis was more than happy with the casting.

Firstly, a happybirthday to Waris Hussein who turned 75 on Monday. Waris was of course the director of the pilot episode of Doctor Who : An Unearthly Child back in 1963.

Waris Hussein was born on 9 December 1938 in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. He moved to London with his parents in 1947. He attended Cambridge and worked as a trainee at the BBC, where his mother, Attia Hussein, was a newsreader and dramatic star. He became the first Asian
BBC Drama director. According to Waris, he had to put up with a lot of
"innuendo" and gossip about how he got to do what he was doing. He could
feel himself being stared at and it made him determined not to fail.

In 1963, he became director of a new programme called Doctor Who along with Verity Lambert who produced it, and the concept of Sydney Newman. Waris moved on the following year to direct The Indian Tales of Rudyard Kipling in 1964. A list of his credits can be found here.

Saturday, 7 December 2013

Wendy Padbury, born 7 December 1947 in Warwickshire, England, played companion Zoe Heriot from The Wheel in Space to The War Games and again in The Five Doctors.

Happy 66th Birthday Wendy

Padbury came to prominence as an actor in 1966, when she joined the cast of the long-running ATV soap opera Crossroads. She played the role of Stephanie "Stevie" Harris, foster daughter to the show's main character, Meg Mortimer (Noele Gordon).

She was cast as the Second Doctor's new companion, Zoe Heriot, in Doctor Who in 1968. She became very close to her co-stars Frazer Hines and Patrick Troughton.
Padbury tells many fond stories about the practical jokes they played
on each other during rehearsals; perhaps the most famous tale she told
about this was when, in rehearsal, she fell asleep. As she was wearing a
kilt, Patrick Troughton undid the clasp and then woke her up. Startled,
she leaped up and the kilt fell off. In those days, the rehearsals for Doctor Who
were held in a Church hall - the moment Wendy leaped up and screamed
was the exact moment the Vicar walked into the hall. Wendy now says,
very fondly of Patrick Troughton, that he had deliberately timed it so!

Her connection with Doctor Who, after she left the programme (at the same time as Hines and Troughton) was not quite over. She appeared in Doctor Who and the Daleks in Seven Keys to Doomsday (1974), a stage play at the Adelphi Theatre London based on the television series, in which she played a companion named Jenny, opposite Trevor Martin as the Doctor. She made a cameo appearance, again opposite Hines and Troughton in Doctor Who's twentieth anniversary story, The Five Doctors.
She is now retired and lives in France.

Friday, 6 December 2013

24 years ago today, the original series of Doctor Who came to an end with the final story 'Survival' with Sylvester McCoy as the seventh incarnation of the Doctor and Sophie Aldred as his teenage companion Dorothy 'Ace' McShane. It also had a cameo by the popular 1980's comedy duo Gareth Hale and Norman Pace.

Survival was the fourth and final story of Season 26 of Doctor Who. As such it was the final story to be broadcast, although not produced, of the classic series. The serial aired on Wednesday 22nd November 1989 and ended 3 weeks later on Wednesday 6th December 1989. Each episode were 25 minutes, and hard to believe by today's standard that was all we got back then at the end.

Interestingly, it is the last canonical televised adventure to feature the TARDIS prop designed by Tom Yardley-Jones's and commissioned by John Nathan-Turner. It made it's first appearance in The LeisureHive and remained in use for the whole of his time as producer. It had a final outing in the 1993 Children In Need special Dimensions in Timebefore being retired.

Synopsis:

The Doctor brings Ace back to her home town of Perivale. Her old friends are being kidnapped by a race of alien hunters called the Cheetah People, who were shown the way to Earth by the Doctor's old enemy the Master (Anthony Ainsley).

Anthony Ainsley (20 August 1932 - 3 May 2004)

One of the Cheetah people

Before broadcast, Sylvester McCoy was asked to come back in and record the outgoing dialogue which is heard as The Doctor and Ace walk back to the TARDIS.

"There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's
asleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of
song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and
somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace. We've got work to
do"

The ‘Other Doctor’ is the Doctor’s dark chapter, an _hitherto unknown
incarnation whose existence he has spent centuries repressing, a secret
he wants no one to know of. He is a relic of the past, part of the
great Time War, when he spent centuries fighting alongside his fellow
Time Lords against the Daleks and made the final decision to end it with
a desperate act that cost that incarnation the right to use the name
“Doctor”.

This haunted and battle-worn Other Doctor is finally forgiven after
helping find a new solution to end the war, giving the Eleventh Doctor a
new purpose as he heads into further adventures.

Contents:
The Other Doctor Action Figure.
The Other Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver Accessory.
The Moment Accessory.
The Eighth Doctor alternate head

There is an issue I have with this release is, the (Ninth) War Doctor never wore the same outfit as worn by Paul McGann as the Eighth. If anything, the changeable head should be that of Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor. However, it is is fantastic that McGann is being recognised with this release. We just need an updated Eighth Doctor figures - the Big Finish Dark Eyes and The Night Of The Doctor ones. Maybe we will get them (?)

Tuesday, 3 December 2013

In an interview with Digital Spy, Steven Moffat has revealed that the Doctor's search for Gallifrey "might take him a while".

Why did you decide to bring back Gallifrey?

"It was about a year ago, I remember thinking, 'What occasion in the
Doctor's life is the most important?' - well, it's the day he blew up
Gallifrey. Then I tried to imagine what writing that scene would
be like and I thought, 'There's kids on Gallifrey and he's going to
push the button? He wouldn't!' I don't care what's at stake, he's not
going to do it. So that was the story - of course he never did
that, he couldn't. He's the Doctor - he's the man who doesn't do that.
He's defined by the fact that he doesn't do that, whatever the cost, he
will find another way. So it had to be the story of what really happened, that he's forgotten. Of course he didn't - he's the Doctor ! He doesn't do things like that!

How will the search for Gallifrey figure into future Doctor Who?

"The Doctor has the possibility of going home – he can find Gallifrey
– but it might take him a while, who knows? And who knows what he’ll do
when he gets there? Get bored and run away again, I would think! But he
has a mission statement."

"It
was fascinating when Doctor Who first came back that he was
this war survivor dealing with guilt and rage – that was his story. Of
course, he slowly gets over that and then there’s a danger that he just
becomes about… farting about a bit, which starts to take some of the
baseline out of the show somehow. So we’ve given him something to pitch
for."

He also hinted at how the new story arc will develop: "It’s not like
we’ll spend every episode saying, ‘I nearly found it!’ – we absolutely
will not do that – but it gives him somewhere to go. The Doctor doesn’t
know he’s a character in a television show – he doesn’t know he’s having
adventures for our entertainment – he’s got to have something to do and
that will be the thing he does."

Series 35 begins filming in January 2014 and is expected to start airing on BBC One in the Autumn of 2014.

Sunday, 1 December 2013

UK satalite channel Watch (SKY 109 & Virgin 124) is to dedicate a day to the Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith following his finale The Day Of The Doctor which airs on BBC One on Christmas day, two days later on Friday, 27th December 2013.

Doctor Who's Steven Moffat has described Peter Capaldi's take on the Time Lord as an "old beast", and that Peter "will give us a whole new version of the Doctor."

"We've got used to two brilliant iterations of the younger, more popular
Doctor and they have both been superlative," Moffat said, "But now it's
time for the old beast to snarl at you for a bit! Sometimes you see that a bit in Matt Smith's Doctor - he will remind
the people around him, 'I'm not really like this' - but I think Peter's
Doctor will make that even clearer."